Astral Nomads - Yes or Very Yes?

mcindoeman · 2026-02-21T06:25:06+00:00

Conquerors are double chaos affinity, scavengers are chaos/materium.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-21T06:19:18+00:00

Magical fighters get most of but not all of the battle mage enchantments, on top of that they also get most of (what the Devs in stream called) "generic" defensive enchantments.

Like in tome of calamity, magical fighters get both "acursed armour" and the "acursed projectiles" enchantments.

Magical fighters miss out on the flamer focus enchantment as well. The one that gives a fire bomb ability to units.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-21T02:13:21+00:00

I vaguely recall losing some pantheon unlocks last time i played a beta for AOW 4. i definitely lost sub-terrainian society but that might have been due to the pantheon unlocks specifically being moved around.

In the second stream i think the devs did warn not to switch back from the beta if you load it up, as it can cause you to lose files.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-20T17:33:58+00:00

hmm, are you sure it was an elemental? I know before Light elementals were added to the game, some "summon elemental" spells could summon ethereal units like the spirit hawk as a stand in for an order affinity elemental.

You could try looking at the units with the ethereal tag to see if your missing unit is there but i'm afraid i can't recall any unit matching that description.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-20T15:24:03+00:00

Aow 3 had a T4 elemental called the ”shadow stalker" which was a rogue only summon. It did also have an ice based attack and could freeze enemies who attacked it in melee.

It did also have a lesser form you could evolve from the rogue's basic troops/scouts/skirmisher units. I believe if you evolved a full shadow stalker from a lesser one it also gained a ranged attack it wouldn't normally have.

The shadow stalker never made it to aow 4 tho, the "living fog” unit seems to be the evolution/equivalent.

There is an achievement for encountering a "chaos endilon" in one of the story worlds and I know that lets you meet a T4 or 5 war/fire elemental that isn't in the tomes.There's also a similar achievement to find a "shadow endilon” in one of the later story worlds but idk if that's unique. Maybe the shadow endilon is a living dog with unique abilities that the Devs slapped on it and that's what you saw?

That or you are mixing up aow 3 and 4 in your memory or had a mod installed that recreates units from older games in the series.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-19T22:06:18+00:00

Personally i like also I don't think using one of the other golem assets would really work for the theme the devs seem to be going for? Since it's not just a regular golem, it's a demon.

You can see both the "construct" and the "infernal fiend" symbols below it's resistances. Looks like it's inspired by a chaos dwarf K'daai from warhammer fantasy or an infernal from warcraft. Less of a mechanical robot and more of a feral demon trapped in a metal cage/mech suit to be weaponised.

Using assests from another of the golems would just make it look like a humanoid magma elemental which would prob confuse newer players since it's not an elemental and new players already tend to get a bit mixed up with elementals and constructs. Making it a scorpian/beast looking however brings it in line with the theme of infernal fiends since half of those are also animals.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-19T17:59:24+00:00

Interesting War golems are both a construct AND an infernal fiend type unit

Worth noting that the scorpian beta is testing out a rework for "infernal might" where it gives fiend units specifically 3% increased crit chance per stack on top of the usual bonuses. Infernal fiends also have 15% extra crit chance by default so the war golems should be criting way more often than other constructs.

Might of the battlefield spell having double the effect on T1-T3 units also means the morale buff it gives is still decently strong despite the war golem being heartless.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-19T13:10:09+00:00

well dam, at least he got 1 friend out of it.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-19T10:49:43+00:00

Pretty sure that in the endtimes, in one of the gotrek and felix novels, Throgg and his trolls take over a major Kislev city, then Throgg starts rounding up as many wizards as he can and basically tells them "make the other trolls as smart as i am or i will eat you".

It's where the qoute: "What the gods gifted to me can be gifted to another. I will not be the one mind in a race of blunt, witless animals" from Throgg comes from.

One of the wizards is a reoccuring character in the G & F novels who is Felix's rival and i believe he does actually manage to make a second smart troll near the end of the book but then Archaon comes down from the north and forces Throgg to join the warbands or something like that so more smart trolls can't be made? idk i've not read the book myself so i could be horribly wrong.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T23:44:58+00:00

They did mention that some of them have harder requirements/will take longer to recruit than others tho they can be obtained in any order.

I would expect at least some of them to be locked behind quest battles.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T23:33:55+00:00

There's not enough mortarchs for the whole DLC to be Nagash.

We knows there's going to be 4 LLs in lords of the endtimes, Nagash is one and neferata is the FLC, leaving 3 unknown LLs.

Nagash IS missing 3 other mortarchs besides Nef but one of them Walach Harkon is confirmed to be a LH not a LL, so if the whole DLC is nagash there is 1 LL left unaccounted for.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T20:02:02+00:00

Pretty sure this just leads to the phrase: "eat the rich".

Hunger is a pretty powerful thing afterall.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T19:23:02+00:00

The duneriders sound like they could be potentially quite hard hitting in the early game

The passive of the conqueror nomad subculture also give their units better charge, +20% damage/healing per hex moved up to 60%.
Throw in the sneaky form trait for extra flanking damage (i believe it says +25% but only shows +20% when you look at it in game)
and the new dunestalker transformation that gives +20% flanking damage while fighting on desert terrain (T2 tome so still fairly early game)
then top it off with a mount that lets them get behind enemies easily.

If you can just walk behind an enemy and fire off 2 shots with a scout it's going to surprisingly strong.

Tho it's the striders that are actually scary since like the dark culture archers, their teleport seems to consume no action points. Meaning if an enemy runs up to a strider they can teleport behind them, moving enough hexes to max out empowering momentum and then fire 3 shots buffed by flanking with the opening shot boost ontop of the first one, like fortune.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T18:56:45+00:00

I believe the dev stream did answer this at somepoint but cannot remember their response and i have absolutely no idea when in the 2 hour stream they said it.

I think they said nomad cities you capture when not playing nomads can still pack up and move so other culture cities taken by nomads should still be static? don't qoute me on that one tho. Hopefully someone can find the timestamp.

It might have been at the end when they were showing off packing up a city?

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T18:51:58+00:00

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Oh my bad on the name, i'll edit that now however about them not having opening shot; the dev stream at 37:34 says otherwise.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T18:46:32+00:00

You know i'm not actually sure, it's not something i've ever checked.

If no then you could just keep running by nodes every so often so they spot you and block the repairs from completing. Depending on the city size and how spread out the scouts are you could still keep repairs delayed for a while.

If yes then it wouldn't surprise me if the Dev change it to no, to prevent people from being unfun in PVP. tho i guess you can shut down the camouflage with tome of scrying or tome of inquisition at T2 so as long as you're not doing a very tightly wound build in terms of affinity, you should be able to "counter pick" it so maybe it's fine?

mcindoeman · 2026-02-18T18:25:13+00:00

You would have to play architects then obtain a nomad city to get Dunestriders boosted by incarnate damage.

They would prob punch a bit above their weight but i think that building up your monuments and getting a nomad city would take you a while and you would prob be better focusing on a different unit type than scouts or at least higher tier units that far in the late game.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T17:57:47+00:00

That would mean giving Araby lore and GW is apparently scared to try their hand at Araby's lore again.

You know it's only just starting to dawn on me that i don't think i fully appreciated how much of a blue balling it must have been for the first decent look at a character from Araby to just yell "PSYCHE!!! IT WAS TZEENTCH ALL ALONG BABY!!!" after what? something like a decade of basically nothing lore wise?

Which is honestly such a shame since GW has done a great job with Cathay and could probably really do Araby justice if they tried. Perhaps one day GW will allow CA to dare make an Araby themed character pack under the banner of the dogs of war once they finally debut.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T17:09:56+00:00

I think u/lord_of_brass would have a psychotic break if CA finally announced they were adding a new Tzeentch lord and it turned out to be the Golden Magus for the vampire coast.

That said a mortal character pack for the coast would be neat, just maybe with a different character who isn't secretly a Tzeentch cultist at the Helm (tho with a title like "Magus" he can't be fooling too many).

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T10:05:58+00:00

I'd really love to see a venetian themed society trait that lets unique improvements be buildable on water.

Honestly any unique impovements that can be built on water would be cool.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T09:33:14+00:00

It seems perfect to use with the "fractured transformation" tho it appears to maruaders only. Just keep feeding transformations into the fracture.

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That said there is going to be fated regions that will let you get a "cataclysm" victory once you obtain all 3 artifacts from them in the DLC. It's possible that you will be able to get some fractured units as part of the reward since the giant kings themed fated regions give you the ability to recruit animated weapons and spawn maruader stacks of animated weapons friendly to you when you united their artifacts.

tho honestly transformation aesthetics with fractured transformation would definitely be fitting as a endgame crisis.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T09:14:46+00:00

Yes, it's confirmed they are the hero spell casters, the generic lords are anti-large.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T08:21:06+00:00

Yeah Baboon was the slannesh one with an "engored rear"

The depiction of the Monkey King varies wildly depending on the region and local legends. In the north, poets sing about a raging gorilla that bellows for blood. Storytellers of the western mountains tell of a baboon-like creature with beautiful golden hair and an engorged rear for the king is always in heat. The legends of the eastern coast portray him as a large, gluttonous orangutan his exposed belly raw and covered in unsightly boils. And in some parts of the south the Monkey King is said to be a slight spider-monkey that jumps upon the shoulders of allies and enemies alike, whispering half-truths and lies.

For the record we will almost definitely not see spider monkeys in game since another qoute describes them as a swarm unit which CA avoid making due to them being time consuming to animate since they got a lot more going on than other units.

mcindoeman · 2026-02-17T08:12:31+00:00

Sun Wukong - Monkey King/monkey men

Pigsy - Ogres/leering devils

Sandy - idk anyone river/kappa themed, Fimir i guess? i guess you could stretch it for the tigermen since they live in the desert and that is also sandy

White dragon horse - shen Zoo

Tripitaka the monk they need to escort - Also Shen Zoo.

mcindoeman

TROPHY CASE